I hope we have seen the end of the tirades against PG&E and SmartMeters.
Seems to me there are far too many semi-paranoid and excessively risk-adverse people with too much unused time on their hands.
Damning a firm for trying to do its job is a waste.
Even if you don”t agree with it, this is basically is not a consumer concern in a market economy. If one wants to have a voice, buy stock. PG&E is a publicly held firm and ask for time at the annual meeting.
PG&E got into this mess by trying to accomplish two things 1) Be efficient and deliver its product at minimum expense to the consumer and 2) To approach the growing problems of finite power production and limited transmission capabilities. Interestingly enough the vitriolic reaction to a very sound set of goals is inhibiting the success of both missions.
I suggest that a lot of people read the contracts with the firm to reaffirm its responsibilities with respect to getting service. Access is a major point.
To me PG&E has done pretty well. First of all it has done nothing illegal and is not trying to foist off equipment that has not been OK”d by proper authorities. Basically the same as with TVs, microwaves, cell phones, computers and such.
It will not get all the data it wanted to mitigate brownouts and ease transmission routings, but a substantial amount and this applies to all of the other energy and water suppliers across the country.
And it has offered at least three alternatives to the basic service. These are different product packages from the default and will and should cost dissenters more because it will cost more to service them. I hope it is worth it to them.
Let”s face it the ultimate market action for a customer is to stop buying from the supplier you are having trouble with. This can”t be done in this case unless the customer wishes to be his own supplier by obtaining capacities to meet his/her needs.
Because PG&E is a regulated monopoly the advantages of economies of scale were recognized about the turn of the 20th century for utilities or the U.S. would be covered by pipelines and wires and rates would be far higher from a myriad of small suppliers.
To offset the potential of a monopoly using its power to its own advantage-study Standard Oil in the 1890s, regulatory bodies were established to protect the people and assure that pricing was more of a function of cost than for unregulated business.
Guthrie Worth
Lakeport
